The first season of WmD is dedicated to the “big questions in ecology and evolution“. Basically I want to establish WmD’s unique combination of curiosity and insight by enabling him to grapple with the major questions that emerge when one really looks at the origin of life and at the biotic systems living things have formed. This episode, “Gotta come from somewhere”, is meant to cover these questions:

Why does life exist at all?

What makes life different from non-life?

In this episode, WmD also has a lot of burden to carry in contextualizing his curiosity and telling us a little bit about him (particularly how he came to produce such a video, which involves a backstory character named Theo Carroll). We are introduced to his mother (Lynn) and an implied Catholic upbringing, and there is an allusion to WmD’s place of employment. There was a lot to pack into this episode, so it runs a bit long and is maybe a bit slow, but everything packed in there will prove to be important at some point in this series.

The actual release date for this video in WmD’s world was in mid-May. I am definitely going to take liberties with timelines in this early stage of the project… although if enough people start following it as a potentially-real blog I will need to stop retrospectively inventing history.

This is not the first video I have ever edited, but it is maybe the third. I received invaluable help on editing this video from my wife, Teresa Torchiano, who also let me use a bunch of her equipment. Teresa Torchiano and Gaia Moisan provided valuable feedback on this episode before it was released. Richard Gilman-Opalsky, Gregory Tague, Ben Kates and Adam Goren provided feedback after it was released to assure that this initial episode was not heading me off into the (wrong) wilderness.